Robert Chapman Turner, Bob Turner

1913Born Port Washington, New York

2005Died Sandy Spring, Maryland

EDUCATION

1936BA Economics, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

1936-1941Painting Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1949MFA Industrial Ceramic Design, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Alfred, New York

PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE

1949-1951Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, North Carolina

1958-1979Faculty, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University

 Turner began his artistic career as a painter. In 1944, pressured by a limited income, Turner decided to pursue a career as a potter. Shortly after earning his MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Turner was invited to establish the studio pottery program at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. In 1951 Turner returned to teach at Alfred and built his own studio at Alfred Station, New York.

Robert Turner's work throughout the 1950s and 1960s consisted of functional, wheel thrown wares; casseroles, covered jars, vases, and bowls. In the 1970s Turner begin to experiment with making abstract, non-functional pottery following the approach to clay used by Peter Voulkos. 

During the 1970s he travelled to Western Africa and returned to his studio to make distinctive vessel forms named after African peoples and kingdoms. By the 1980s, still working with the artistic impressions from his African trip, Turner reduced his visual vocabulary to cone and cylinder shapes colored with three basic hues; blue-black, red-brown, and whites.

The simple, functional stoneware vessel forms Turner created are now icons of mid-century American studio ceramics. Initially, influenced by classical Greek and Chinese ceramics, his mature works reflected diverse influences including Japanese folk pottery, Zen Buddhism, Bauhaus design and modern Scandinavian ceramics. 

 An interview with Robert Turner conducted June 11, 2001 by Dr. Margaret Carney, for the Archives of American Art’s Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America is available at http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-robert-turner-12010.